Pavel Talankin had never been outside Russia before he went into exile in summer 2024, leaving his home in the Ural mountains for his own safety after he quietly stood up to President Putin's war machine.
In less than two years, Pasha, as he's known, transformed from an events coordinator and videographer at a primary school in Karabash, one of the most polluted places on earth, to an Oscar nominee.
The director has already taken selfies with Hollywood's finest including two of this year's best actor contenders, Leonardo Dicaprio and Ethan Hawke.
"They are just normal people like the rest of us," he told me when we met in Los Angeles ahead of Sunday's Academy Awards.
But Pasha is far from normal; an unlikely hero whose film, Mr Nobody Against Putin, made with the Copenhagen-based American director David Borenstein, already won best documentary at the Bafta Film Awards in February.
